03:02 (36 page)

‘To all terrorist fighters out there, this is Commander Aaditya of the Indian National Army. Abu-Amriki and his friends are dead and we are taking their vehicle back with us. Go back home while you can and stop following your leaders. All you will find here is death.’

We disposed of the bodies and cleaned up the Humvee before we took it inside the society. Our people had seen the horrors of war first-hand, but somehow it felt important that I still try and shield them as far as I could. There was no reason for children to see the blood and gore that had been inside the Humvee.

Shaikh found a small Indian flag with which we replaced the black flag that had been flying above the Humvee. When we turned into Central Avenue, I was standing at the turret and saw hundreds of people had lined up. Almost none of them had got any sleep the previous night and many were still mourning the loss or injury of loved ones, yet I could see smiles among the crowd. This was a good sign: it was important that we believed that the war was far from lost, that we could still fight back.

As I got out of the vehicle, I called Ronald over. ‘This thing has a missile launcher on it and a few missiles on board. Any idea how to use it?’

Ronald looked in. ‘As far as I can tell, this is an American TOW anti-tank launcher. I have no idea how to use it, but I’m sure there will be people on the radio who will. I’ll get on it right away.’

The time we had to celebrate was limited because there was work to be done. Kundu commandeered an old water tanker which Mahadev had been working on and set off on the water run, accompanied by both Humvees. I hitched a ride on the water tanker, as I was sure the enemy would retaliate, but by late afternoon, there had been no attacks. With our water supplies replenished and the new weapons we had recovered distributed among more volunteers, I decided to take a break and sat down in the meeting room at my society.

Mr Sinha brought over a cup of tea and asked, ‘What plans for tonight?’

‘The same, Mr Sinha. People need to be in the parking lots or on the ground floor in rooms like this. I’m sure the enemy will try and attack again. We’ve embarrassed them today and they will definitely be back.’

‘Any ideas on what we can do if they start firing mortars again?’

I had been thinking about just that and, to be honest, had no real answers. That was when Mohit, Nasir and a few of their friends dropped by.

‘Sir, I’ve been feeling like I’m wasting my time. What’s the point of generating solar power and getting bloody fridges working when people are dying and I can’t do anything about it?’

‘Mohit, don’t be so hard on yourself. Without you, we’d be living in darkness for much longer.’

He sat down next to me and I could see a look of excitement in his eyes. ‘Sir, I have an idea. We’ve been working on it since morning and I think we can try it out tonight.’

‘What is it?’

He took out a pad and began sketching. ‘Today we have only a couple of night vision glasses that Ronald and Shaikh bought along and the one we captured, but not enough to cover all checkpoints at all times, especially if you guys are out on missions and have taken them along. So, in most cases, we’re blind at our checkpoints and the enemy can see everything we’re doing with their night vision glasses. Also, our bombs are triggered by wires, which mean a pretty limited range.’

‘Mohit, if you’re trying to make me feel optimistic about our chances, you’re not doing a very good job.’

He chuckled and Nasir laughed as well and then picked up where Mohit had left off. ‘Sir, we want to help and, to be honest, we may not know how to kill a man with our hands or shoot someone at long range, but all of us have been putting our heads together all day to get some ideas. Believe me, we want to kill as many of those motherfuckers as we can.’

I saw him now, all humour gone, replaced by rage. I knew that Nasir had brought a boy to the clinic the previous night, his face nearly blown off by shrapnel. The boy had died in Nasir’s arms.

‘Sir, we’ve got four IEDs that will be triggered through the radios we have captured. I’ve tested them without explosive charges, and they have a range of at least one kilometre. We’ve placed the bombs at chokepoints on all our approaches and the explosive charge is more than double of what we’ve used before. If they come tonight, we can hit them at long range without any of us being exposed to their snipers. If we have lookouts on high rooftops with our night vision glasses, we should see them coming and pass on information to you to trigger the bombs. I feel responsible for those old men dying last night, and this is my way of getting back.’

Mohit was next. ‘There was a barn behind our colonies that was used for shooting TV serials, and we discovered several big spotlights there. I’ve got several solar panels that work and are being charged now. Instead of lighting up our homes, I’ll use them to light up those spotlights. Shaikh told me that their night vision will be ruined if they suddenly come across bright light. We’ll line up the approaches at the lake and Ghatkopar with the spotlights so their snipers no longer have such an easy job, and our own visibility is much better.’

I could sense the energy in the room, but we still didn’t have answers to everything.

‘What about the mortars? They can still keep lobbing them at us all night.’

Mohit didn’t have an answer to that but he had thought about it. ‘We turn off all our lights. Why give them easy targets? Let them be lit up by our spotlights while we stay in the darkness at night.’

I got Ronald on the radio.

‘Hey, what’s the range on their mortars?’

‘Could be up to five or more kilometres.’

I groaned inwardly. With that kind of range, they could be sitting comfortably halfway to the airport and lobbing shells at us all night. But something clicked in my mind.

‘How would they transport them?’

‘They’d probably bring them up in the backs of jeeps, Aadi.’

I looked at the students around me.

‘Guys, thanks for the ideas. Get them all in motion and I’ll go work on those mortars.’

‘What are you planning?’

I grinned at them. ‘We’ll go hunting.’

I had thought that Megha might object, that we might have another argument, but she just nodded when I told her what we were going to do. Then she came over and hugged me.

‘Aadi, even a few days ago, I would have asked you not to put yourself in harm’s way, but that would be selfish. I think I’ve lived twenty years in the last two weeks; I’ve found you, we’ve gotten married, and if I were to die today, I would have very few regrets.’

I shushed her, but she continued. ‘So, no regrets, Aadi. Do what you’ve got to.’

Next I went to gather my volunteers. Mahadev seemed to be an automatic inclusion, since he just tagged along with me the moment he heard we were headed out on a mission, without even asking what it was. However, I wanted everyone to have a clear idea of what we were getting into.

‘This time we’re not waiting behind our checkpoint for the enemy to attack, nor are we setting off a bomb from afar. We’ll be out there, among them, trying to disrupt them before they launch mortars at our community. There is a good chance all of us will not be coming back alive, but if we truly are the Indian National Army, then better it’s us out there, fighting the enemy, than the kids and elderly here facing their shells.’

I was a bit surprised when almost everyone volunteered, and in the end, we chose to take a few of our experienced fighters along, but leave some of them behind. Part of it, and the reason I gave them, was that in case the enemy attacked while we were out there, we needed them to lead the defences. But it was also because if none of us got back, then at least there would be some experienced fighters left.

Before we headed out, there was one more thing on my mind. I asked Ronald to walk with me.

‘Ronald, still no news from the convoy headed from Goa? They should have been here by now.’

He shook his head.

‘Where could they be?’

‘No idea, Aadi. There’s no response on the radio, but then their set may have malfunctioned. Their vehicles may have broken down or they may be clearing abandoned vehicles from some stretch of the road. Three of the MARCOS teams in the city have not checked in either, but three have, and they say they are going to make their way here.’

Neither of us brought up the possibility that the enemy had cells along the way which had attacked the convoy from Goa, or that they had run into looters or gangs. Their fate, and their likely arrival, was completely out of our hands.

As night fell, everyone who was not going to be at the checkpoints or on ambulance duty was shepherded into parking lots or ground floor common rooms. All our checkpoints were manned and the two Humvees were placed at the two likely attack points—the lake and the road leading to Ghatkopar—with Pandey in charge of one and Ronald in charge of the other. Both Pandey and Ronald had radios controlling the bombs Nasir had placed and we had lookouts with night vision glasses on three tall buildings to give them warning of any approaching vehicles or men.

At eight in the evening, as planned, every single light in our community was killed, and the spotlights Mohit had placed along our approach roads were turned on. Using that sudden change, we ran out through the slums and by-lanes near the lake, six teams of two men each. Each of us was wearing a bulletproof vest and was armed with an assault rifle, a pistol, a knife and two of the tennis ball bombs. We were headed out to patrol areas and our goal was to get to the mortar teams before they fired.

I ran hard, trying to get as far into the blackness as I could before the enemy made any move. I had always been pretty fit and had run almost every day, but now, as I ran, I realized that the lack of any junk food, constantly being on edge and near daily fighting had hardened and toned my body like never before. I had been running for close to fifteen minutes without a break and looked back to see Mahadev, who was paired with me, a few feet behind me. With his thin, sinewy body, I figured that, in another life, he could have been a great marathon runner. Then I stopped myself. The life in which he had been an auto-rickshaw driver was over. We were all leading new lives, and he could be anything he wanted.

Finally, after twenty minutes of hard running, I stopped, taking cover behind a cluster of shops. Mahadev joined me and we stood there, hearing nothing but our own laboured breathing. I looked back towards Powai and smiled as I saw the one set of lights we had kept on in the buildings—two powerful spotlights that lit up the tricolour on the rooftop.

As our battle began, we wanted everybody for miles around to know who was waging this war, and on whose behalf.

I heard the distant thump of an explosion and my heart sank. The enemy had got off the first shot without us being any closer to finding them. Mahadev and I had been on alert for any sounds of vehicles that might be transporting the mortars into firing position, but we had not heard anything so far. A few seconds later, we heard another explosion and this time I saw the dull glow of an explosion coming from the direction of Hiranandani Gardens. That meant it was likely that a round had hit a vehicle or shrapnel had penetrated the fuel tank of an abandoned car. Given the large numbers of cars lying on the streets, there was no way we could have moved them all to cover.

As we ran towards the next alley, intending to loop back towards Powai through LBS Marg, we heard the sounds of laughter. We crouched down behind a low wall in front of the shops just ahead of R City Mall and peered around the corner. There were no lights around, but living in darkness for over two weeks had made us much more accustomed to seeing by moonlight. Just about thirty metres ahead of us was a jeep with several men around it and we saw one of them load something onto its back and then the men crouched as the mortar fired with a whooshing sound. We had found our target.

‘Bastards are laughing as they kill our children!’ I could sense Mahadev’s rage as he hissed out the words, and I wanted to make these men pay dearly as well.

I lit up one of the bombs with a lighter I was carrying and threw it at the men. They only knew something was amiss when one of them heard the bomb bouncing on the ground a few metres behind them. By then it was too late. The bomb exploded literally at their feet and Mahadev and I were running at them a split second later. One of the men, spared much of the impact since he had been on the other side of the jeep, opened fire with his pistol and I heard Mahadev shout as he fell. I raised my own pistol and fired, aiming at the muzzle flashes. I knew the man would be wearing a vest and could not be sure of a kill, so I took out my knife as I vaulted on top of the jeep and onto the other side where I found the man scrambling for his pistol, which he had probably lost when my shots hit him. I plunged my knife into his neck and then turned to the other men. There were three of them and they were all wounded to one extent or the other.

Two weeks earlier I would never have imagined finishing off a wounded man with a knife, but perhaps I was no longer the same person. I killed all of them and then called out to Mahadev. He walked to me, holding his side gingerly.

‘I’m okay. The vest saved me but it hurts like hell.’

‘Let’s finish this and move on.’

I was tempted to carry away as many of their weapons and ammunition as possible, but we would never make good speed weighed down with them all, and our mission for the night was far from over. Another explosion coming from the direction of Powai reminded us of that. So we stuffed the pouches around our waists with spare ammo clips and took one spare AK-47 each. Then it was time to destroy the mortar. Mahadev lit a bomb and stuffed it down the barrel of the tube and we ran like hell, diving for cover behind a wall as it exploded. The shells must have also gone off, for there was an almighty explosion that shook the ground, and then an even louder secondary explosion as the fuel tank of the jeep caught fire.

Mahadev grinned, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight. ‘That will get their attention.’

We ran on, hoping to create as much mayhem as we could. A huge explosion from further down the road told us that Ronald had triggered the IED. That could only mean the enemy had moved forces towards our checkpoint. We were not too far off, and it was tempting to try and catch the enemy by surprise from behind, so I ran towards Powai, Mahadev on my heels. We turned at the petrol pump which Pandey and I had come to on the first day after the Blackout and then realized what a blunder we had made.